Never growing up

Bad Luck

This last week was the last week of school for the quarter, and it also turned out to be the week that my family was going to Palm Springs for a vacation. Its a timeshare that we've had for years. I actually complain about it being boring and hot, but I actually like going. Anyway they were supposed to be there for a week (friday 6/10-fri 6/17) Well I had papers to write and I had work, so I couldn't drive over to Palm Springs till Monday night. It turned out to be a good trip, I mean is was just somewhere different, ya know whatever. Anyway my mom decided she wanted to leave thursday night cause she didn't want to miss another day of work. I decided I would leave too because I didnt want to wake up the next morning by myself just to check out. So my mom left around 8 o'clock on thursday about 20 minutes later I get in my car and am driving toward the freeway to leave. My mom calls me from her cell phone, but her reception is bad and the call gets cut off. right as I am in front of the freeway entrance I finally get ahold of my mom who tells me that there is major traffic on the 10 freeway westbound. I groan and think to myself, that I should have left later so there wouldn't be traffic, but I regretfully merge onto the freeway anyway. Anyway turns out that the traffic on the freeway was due to a shooting that happened earlier that day (around 3pm). They closed the freeway, and backed up traffic for hours. To make a long story short the one hour trip from Palm Springs to my house in Rialto, took me about six hours!!! While stuck on the freeway I didn't know what was going on, I was listening to the radio a bit, but didnt really hear anything about it, I actually spent most of my time trying to make calls with my cell. I specify the word TRY because I couldn't make any calls, it kept telling me the network was busy. I guess cause there was sooo many people out there. I think it had something to do with crappy cingular, anyway I couldn't make a call till close to 1am. It was really a nightmare; it felt surreal, like it wasn't happening. I was really frustrated that I didn't know what was going on and couldn't reach anyone.

Things got crazy out there people were yelling and honking. And because we were literally parked out on the freeway at times people got out of their cars to see what was going on, and I saw people peeing on the side of the freeway. People were so sick of the traffic that they were driving on the shoulder, it eventually started to look like another lane on the freeway. It seemed ridiculous and I was sooo mad. I guess after I found out that is was because police were trying to capture a murder suspect, I felt better about it, but at the time I was furious and felt like crying. I don't know if that was the best way to handle the situation, but now at least I know the reasoning behind it.

So anyway when I got home I went straight to bed (it was 3am) and the spent the next day finishing up my paper and studying for my final the next morning, and I was still pissed about the whole freeway thing. I kept thinking that if I had stayed at the resort a few more minutes I would have got my moms call sooner and maybe stayed put, or if I had just decided to leave the next morning. . . . man that's some bad luck!

Anyway here are some links about the story
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20050617-0155-ca-freewaypursuit.html
http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050618/NEWS08/506180328

The first article says traffic ways delayed 4 hours but thats crap, I was there much longer than that =(

posted by Kathy =) @ 12:44 AM